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Does wind-power help with removing some of the energy from the atmosphere that global warming is putting in? Or because electricity ends up converted back into

Does wind-power help with removing some of the energy from the atmosphere that global warming is putting in? Or because electricity ends up converted back into heat, does it make no difference?

pietjepuk88 7y ago
I would say it only helps because it prevents (or reduces) the amount of additional green house gasses released in the atmosphere. I doubt converting wind energy to electricity and then "storing" that electricity/energy somehow and somewhere (such that it doesn't turn into heat) is a stupidly inefficient way of using that wind mill to reduce further global warming. Use the electricity, and don't use the fossil fuel that would have otherwise been used. Related question I guess for someone with more knowledge about this... If green house gas concentrations were as they were before the industrial revolution, but we were outputting in the current world's energy consumption in heat, what would the temperature rise be? I'm guessing it's almost negligible, with the sun's radiation hitting the earth in one hour supposedly being enough to power the entire earth for a year.
- jabl 7y ago
  From https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL063514 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201... > Over the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the cumulative CO2‐radiative forcing exceeds the amount of energy released upon combustion by a factor >100,000.
wcoenen 7y ago
It makes no difference overall, but locally there are effects from mixing. Normally at night, land tends to cool faster than the air higher up because of the difference in emissivity. But the increased turbulence and mixing from wind turbines counteracts this, resulting in localized warming of land. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.09.009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.09.009
pjc50 7y ago
No, only radiating it to space can do that.
rtkwe 7y ago
To start the amount being removed is absolutely minuscule compared to the amount around. On top of that close to the surface (which is where even the tall turbines are relative to the full scale of things) we're only seeing a tiny fraction of the actual energy in the atmosphere due to surface friction slowing down winds near the surface. And yeah even if we were actually capturing any appreciable amount of the energy most of it does become waste heat once it's used so it just enters back somewhere else.
throwaway5752 7y ago
I don't think you appreciate the scale of the energies involve here. The heat accumulation of global warming is many orders of magnitude greater than electric consumption (not even wind power generation). Even if you could perfectly store and remove all the energy that wind power generated, it would be barely a rounding error. The key is lowering CO2 production.

Does wind-power help with removing some of the energy from the atmosphere that global warming is putting in? Or because electricity ends up converted back into heat, does it make no difference?

pietjepuk88 7y ago

I would say it only helps because it prevents (or reduces) the amount of additional green house gasses released in the atmosphere. I doubt converting wind energy to electricity and then "storing" that electricity/energy somehow and somewhere (such that it doesn't turn into heat) is a stupidly inefficient way of using that wind mill to reduce further global warming. Use the electricity, and don't use the fossil fuel that would have otherwise been used. Related question I guess for someone with more knowledge about this... If green house gas concentrations were as they were before the industrial revolution, but we were outputting in the current world's energy consumption in heat, what would the temperature rise be? I'm guessing it's almost negligible, with the sun's radiation hitting the earth in one hour supposedly being enough to power the entire earth for a year.

jabl 7y ago
From https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL063514 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201... > Over the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the cumulative CO2‐radiative forcing exceeds the amount of energy released upon combustion by a factor >100,000.

wcoenen 7y ago

It makes no difference overall, but locally there are effects from mixing. Normally at night, land tends to cool faster than the air higher up because of the difference in emissivity. But the increased turbulence and mixing from wind turbines counteracts this, resulting in localized warming of land. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.09.009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.09.009

pjc50 7y ago

No, only radiating it to space can do that.

rtkwe 7y ago

To start the amount being removed is absolutely minuscule compared to the amount around. On top of that close to the surface (which is where even the tall turbines are relative to the full scale of things) we're only seeing a tiny fraction of the actual energy in the atmosphere due to surface friction slowing down winds near the surface. And yeah even if we were actually capturing any appreciable amount of the energy most of it does become waste heat once it's used so it just enters back somewhere else.

throwaway5752 7y ago

I don't think you appreciate the scale of the energies involve here. The heat accumulation of global warming is many orders of magnitude greater than electric consumption (not even wind power generation). Even if you could perfectly store and remove all the energy that wind power generated, it would be barely a rounding error. The key is lowering CO2 production.